By comparison, Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton’s rallies were not found to be linked to any increase in assaults. In the months preceding the Nov. 8 presidential election, media accounts of Clinton’s campaign on numerous occasions included the word boring, an adjective that was not known to be applied to her opponent.

While the increased number of altercations in the cities on the days of Trump rallies was not proved to be a direct result of his comments, the researchers believe that the difference in language between the candidates may have had an effect on public behavior.

Epidemiologists explore the causes of health problems, including threats to public safety, injury, and disease. The Penn researchers said they believe their study — an effort to understand some of the causes and motivations of violent behavior — to be the first of its kind: “We know of no other empirical studies that investigated violence at a population level associated with previous U.S. presidential rallies”, the article states. The study did not require outside funding.

The researchers focused on cities with more than 200,000 people where criminal incident data were available online. Through online searches, they identified data for 31 Trump rallies in 22 cities and 38 Clinton rallies in 21 cities. They counted the incidents for those days, as well as other days for the cities. Since weather can be a factor in crime rates, the researchers considered temperature and precipitation in preparing the study.

In the case of Trump rallies, the additional assaults may have occurred at or around campaign events or elsewhere in the cities, but the authors said they were likely the result of “emotional states” transmitted through news reports or social media.

No additional assaults were associated with the days and locations of Clinton campaign events. That included some rallies in Philadelphia.

The effect of political speech on a populace is worthy of additional study, the authors said.

In an air strike by Turkish forces at the only major hospital in the Syrian city of Afrin, nine people were killed. That is what the Kurdish militia YPG and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights report …

According to the UN, 48,000 people have fled the war in the Afrin region in recent days. According to the Observatory, the death toll has risen to 27 in the last 24 hours. There are seven children among the dead. The organization fears that the death toll will rise even further because many people have been seriously injured during the attacks.

A breakthrough by Australian scientists has brought the introduction of an unlikely hero in the global fight against antibiotic resistance a step closer; the humble platypus.

Due to its unique features — duck-billed, egg-laying, beaver-tailed and venomous- the platypus has long exerted a powerful appeal to scientists, making it an important subject in the study of evolutionary biology.

In 2010 scientists discovered that platypus milk contained unique antibacterial properties that could be used to fight superbugs.

Now a team of researchers at Australia’s national research agency, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Oganisation (CSIRO), and Deakin University have solved a puzzle that helps explain why platypus milk is so potent — bringing it one step closer to being used to save lives.

The discovery was made by replicating a special protein contained in platypus milk in a laboratory setting.

“The platypus belongs to the monotreme family, a small group of mammals that lay eggs and produce milk to feed their young. By taking a closer look at their milk, we’ve characterised a new protein that has unique antibacterial properties with the potential to save lives.”

As platypus don’t have teats, they express milk onto their belly for the young to suckle, exposing the mother’s highly nutritious milk to the environment, leaving babies susceptible to the perils of bacteria.

Deakin University’s Dr Julie Sharp said researchers believed this was why the platypus milk contained a protein with rather unusual and protective antibacterial characteristics.

“We were interested to examine the protein’s structure and characteristics to find out exactly what part of the protein was doing what”, she said.

Employing the marvels of molecular biology, the Synchrotron, and CSIRO’s state of the art Collaborative Crystallisation Centre (C3), the team successfully made the protein, then deciphered its structure to get a better look at it.

What they found was a unique, never-before-seen 3D fold.

Due to its ringlet-like formation, the researchers have dubbed the newly discovered protein fold the ‘Shirley Temple‘, in tribute to the former child-actor’s distinctive curly hair.

Dr Newman said finding the new protein fold was pretty special.

“Although we’ve identified this highly unusual protein as only existing in monotremes, this discovery increases our knowledge of protein structures in general, and will go on to inform other drug discovery work done at the Centre”, she said.

In 2014 the World Health Organisation released a report highlighting the scale of the global threat posed by antibiotic resistance, pleading for urgent action to avoid a “post-antibiotic era,” where common infections and minor injuries which have been treatable for decades can once again kill.

The scientists are seeking collaborators to take the potentially life-saving platypus research to the next stage.

Background:

Antimicrobial resistance occurs when bacteria that were once responsive to antimicrobial treatments like antibiotics build up a resistance and then pass that resistance on to their next generation. This leads to ineffective treatments and more persistent infections, caused by these resistant ‘Superbugs‘.

However they were considerably harshened by [Conservative] Peter Lilley (Secretary of State for Social Security 1992-1997) when he introduced the Job Seekers Act in 1995. People claiming the new Job Seekers Allowance, could be sanctioned for up to 26 weeks. Hardship payments were available during the sanction period. Hardship payments were a reduced level of benefit.

Sanctions exploded following the appointment of Iain Duncan Smith as Work and Pensions Sectetrary in 2010. His draconian Welfare Reform Act (2012) increased the length of sanctions to 156 weeks and converted hardship payments (60% of the usual rate of social security) to repayable loans. The number of sanctions imposed from 2010-2014 was more than double the amount imposed in the previous 13 years.

None of the major parties oppose sanctions in principle. Both Labour and Conservative governments have harshened sanctions. However in recent years they have been imposed for the most trivial and spurious reasons. The successful appeal rate is 58% – therefore an alarmingly high volume of sanctions are imposed illegally.

UK: More than a million welfare benefit sanctions imposed against disabled people

13 March 2018

New data reveals the relentless attack on disabled benefit claimants in the last decade. The study found that more than 900,000 Job Seeker’s Allowance (JSA) claimants, who reported a disability, have been financially sanctioned since May 2010.

Also sanctioned were 110,000 claimants of Employment and Support Allowance (ESA), a benefit paid to someone who is sick, and placed in the “work related activity group” (WRAG). A further 140,000 sanctions were applied, but later cancelled.

A sanction is applied to someone’s benefit when a claimant is deemed not to have met part of the stated “conditionality” for claiming that benefit. This can include missing an appointment, or not applying for enough jobs in a given time scale.

According to the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) own estimates, the state spends up to £50 million a year applying sanctions, and £200 million a year monitoring whether claimants meet the conditions for receiving payments. In 2015, the DWP withheld £132 million from claimants in the form of sanctions.

The report was a collaboration between Ben Baumberg Geiger, senior lecturer at the University of Kent, and the Demos think tank. The four-year study included polling 2,000 members of the public, front line assessors, as well as desk research and interviews with experts across nine countries.

It found that unemployed disabled people were up to 53 percent more likely to be given a sanction than other claimants. It concluded that conditionality has little or no effect on improving employment chances for disabled people.

The government intends to push a million more disabled people back into work over the next decade, leading to many more disabled people being treated unfairly and burdened with enormous hardship. It has consistently defended the system of sanctions as a way of encouraging people to find work, and falsely claims the public supports the idea of sanctions.

Despite decades of government-led media hysteria denouncing welfare “scroungers”, the public is more concerned that disabled people are being unfairly denied benefits. More, 45 percent versus 22 percent, thought it was more important to support benefit claimants than to root out fraud, and those who did support sanctions felt that they should be weaker than those the government use at present.

Mark Atkinson, chief executive at the Scope charity, said, “Punitive sanctions can be extremely harmful to disabled people, who already face the financial penalty of higher living costs. There is no clear evidence that cutting disabled people’s benefits supports them to get into, and stay in work.”

Conditionality and sanctions are increasingly being linked to deteriorating physical and mental health in claimants with disabilities. Many are left worrying how they will survive once sanctioned, and in some tragic cases, this has led to death.

Whiting was a shop worker before ill health forced her to retire. She had problems with ongoing pain leading to her having to taking up to 23 tablets a day, including the powerful painkiller morphine. She had been plagued by physical and mental health problems throughout her life, including a brain cyst and a curved spine. At times, this meant she could barely make it through the front door.

As part of meeting conditionality for ESA, Whiting was expected to attend the Work Capability Assessment (WCA). Under the sanctions system, if a claimant does not attend, benefits stop. Jody had missed a routine ESA assessment, as she had not seen the letter informing her that she had to attend the meeting and was therefore unaware of the assessment.

Following her death, Whiting’s family received another letter from the DWP confirming the benefit cut, despite the family having already told staff at the DWP that she had died. At the inquest, the family accused the DWP’s actions of being the trigger that led to Whiting taking a fatal drugs overdose. The inquest heard she had overdosed before, but the “extreme stress” inflicted by the DWP pushed her over the edge. Grieving mother, Joy Dove, spoke out after her death, saying, “I blame the DWP for her death. They have blood on their hands over my Jodey”.

DWP officials are being rewarded with bonus payments for meeting sanctioning targets. At a time when many welfare claimants are being sanctioned, struggling to pay for food and having to resort to the use of food banks, pay roll data published by the DWP for the years April 2016 and March 2017 showed that the department paid out performance-related bonuses to staff totalling £41.3 million. These included payments of £5.3 million on “in month bonuses” and £36 million in end of year bonuses. 240 senior DWP officials pocketed a total of £760,000.

Sanctions are now used much more frequently against welfare claimants across the board, with the severity of sanctions increasing. According to Dr. David Webster at the University of Glasgow, around 350,000 people a year are currently facing sanctions. This is expected to rocket with the introduction of the Universal Credit (UC) system nationally as one million more people in low-paid work will be on the radar for benefit sanctions. “The amounts of money people lose through sanctions are actually larger than the amounts of money people get fined in the magistrates’ courts”, Webster told the BBC.

An example of the extreme harshness of the sanctions regime was cited by a report on the BBC’s Victoria Derbyshire show. Garreth Forrest, from Preston, normally receives a benefits allowance of just £705 a month. For an “offense” he disputes, he was sanctioned with his benefit slashed by £503. The sanction may last four months, and he was left with just over £200 a month, making it impossible to cover all his outgoings, including rent, utilities and food.

Under UC, the use of conditionality is being applied to groups that were once exempt, including the disabled and lone parents. Figures released by the DWP revealed that:

• The percentage of Universal Credit (UC) claimants with a drop in payment due to a sanction was 4.7 percent.

• From August to October 2017, 38 percent of all UC decisions resulted in a sanction.

• 73 percent of UC decisions to apply a sanction in August to October 2017 occurred due to failure to attend or participate in a Work-Focused Interview.

Demos became one of the most influential New Labour think tanks under Labour prime minister Tony Blair. The 1997-2010 Blair/Gordon Brown government adopted a “work first” and “work for all” approach that included the monitoring of JSA claimants’ job searches, backed up by benefit sanctions in cases of non-compliance. In 2008, Labour introduced ESA to replace Incapacity Benefit. ESA contains the Work Capability Assessment medical—a critical instrument used by successive governments for removing people from welfare entitlement.

The Geiger/Demos research is not aimed at ending the inhumane and hated system WCA, but at refurbishing it and tailoring it more towards the requirements of the economy. They propose the government “overhaul the WCA descriptors, so that they transparently reflect the British labour market…” They recommend that “government could collect data on the functional requirements of British jobs—i.e., the specific capabilities that people need to be able to do each job.”

The case will commence this month at the High Court in London and will be one of the largest class action corporate lawsuits ever brought before British courts. A separate lawsuit is pending at the High Court in Belfast, Northern Ireland, where up to 70,000 VW drivers could be entitled to compensation.

Several VW models have been affected, including the Golf, Beetle, Jetta and Passat, as well as VW-manufactured Audi, Porsche, Skoda and Seat vehicles equipped with the firm’s Turbocharged Direct Injection “clean diesel” engines.

NOx, the main gaseous component of diesel exhaust fumes, is one of the principal ingredients in the formation of ground ozone or smog, and has been linked to several cancers, including lung and bowel cancer, as well as asthma, bronchitis and emphysema.

The diesel emissions fraud is in sync with the systematic flouting of air pollution targets by European Union (EU) member states. According to the Guardian, “23 out of the EU’s 28 countries and 130 of its cities” consistently breach legal air quality thresholds. This includes 16 UK cities, with London, Glasgow, Birmingham and Leeds among the worst polluters.

An estimated 40,000 premature deaths occur in the UK every year due to air pollution, which is also responsible for a staggering £20 billion in public health costs.

The EU Parliament’s Directorate-General for Internal Policies carried out a self-incriminating study in response to Dieselgate. It concluded that European regulations are “more adapted to the task of ensuring that Member States do not use vehicle emissions legislation to penalise manufacturers from other Member States”, and promote “the free circulation of vehicles on the European market”, rather than serving to “optimise the effectiveness of environmental legislation.”

Indeed, nearly every major manufacturer and model of diesel vehicle has now been implicated in the emissions fraud.

Independent road emissions tests overseen by the International Council on Clean Transportation found that the Volvo S60, Renault’s Espace Energy, the Nissan X-Trail and FCA’s Jeep Renegade were among the highest polluters on the road and exceeded EU legal emissions—which at 80mg/km is double the US threshold for NOx fumes—by a factor of ten or more.

The engine management system containing the “defeat device”—manufactured by German engineering and electronics multinational Robert Bosch GmbH—is widely supplied across the industry.

Bosch is now fighting multiple class action lawsuits in the US over 1.5 million vehicles manufactured by VW, Daimler, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) and GM. Ford also faces a lawsuit over the sale of some 500,000 pick-up trucks fitted with Bosch software that conceals NOx emissions more than 50 times the US legal limit.

Yet, only VW has been indicted by any government, and only in the US. VW reached a settlement with the US Department of Justice early last year, involving $4.3 billion in criminal and civil penalties and the prosecution of a handful of engineers and low-level executives. The firm has also agreed to buy back and fix 480,000 vehicles, at a cost of approximately $18 billion.

While this ruling is unprecedented in its severity, much of this money has already been recouped through tax write-offs and VW’s ongoing onslaught against jobs, wages and conditions across its global workforce. The firm’s profits doubled in 2017.

To place this in context, GM reached a token $900 million settlement with the Obama administration Justice Department in 2015, over an ignition switch fault, which killed 124 and injured 275, and affected 29 million vehicles across North America. The firm covered-up the defect for more than a decade and escaped criminal prosecution entirely.

The singling out of VW over Dieselgate is bound up with the sharply escalating trade war between America and the EU, particularly Germany. The global tariffs on steel and aluminium imports recently announced by President Trump represent only the latest salvo in this conflict, which is increasingly being fought out in terms of “national security” and backed by rival military build-ups. The car industry has emerged as a major target this week, with Trump threatening to “apply a tax” on cars manufactured in Europe if the EU retaliates with barriers against US exports.

In this context, the EU and its member states have stood firmly behind VW from the outset of the emissions scandal, shielding it from either criminal or civil penalties within Europe.

If comparable levels of liability were to be recognized across the Atlantic—where diesels accounted for 53 percent of new cars sold in 2015, compared to less than 1 percent of the US market—damages could reach the equivalent of many hundreds of billions of dollars and irreparably damage the strategic position of the entire European auto industry on the world markets.

The European Commission has asked only that Volkswagen repair the tainted diesel vehicles as a “commercial gesture” to help “counteract efforts to lodge civil claims for damages in member states.”

VW has already received thousands of complaints over drastically reduced engine performance, fuel economy and even engine failure after the removal of the defeat device. According to confidential sources cited by EUObserver, preliminary tests conducted by EU scientists have revealed that emissions are in fact made worse by the software update.

The response of capitalist authorities in Europe and North America has been totally inadequate in addressing both the health crisis and financial costs to drivers. Besides VW, no other firm has been asked to recall or replace their cars.

Diesel bans, or charges have been proposed for a handful of cities, including London, Stuttgart and Düsseldorf in Germany, as well as Paris, Athens, Madrid, Copenhagen and Mexico City, in what effectively amounts to a massive subsidy to the auto industry at the expensive of the working class.

Millions, even those with relatively new cars, face either a drastic curtailment of their mobility or the considerable out-of-pocket costs and indebtedness involved in upgrading to a vehicle with the latest Euro 6 emissions standards (introduced in September 2015). In Germany, for instance, just 2.7 million of the 15 million diesel cars on German roads meet this standard. Resale values for diesels are also expected to plummet.

In the face of government inaction, European motorists have been forced to engage private law firms on a “no-win-no-fee” basis. The London trial has already been delayed for more than a year as rival law firms have fought for the lucrative right to represent claimants in UK courts.

Law multinationals, such as Australian firm Slater and Gordon, which is representing most claimants in this trial, together with third-party financiers, stand to benefit overwhelmingly from any forthcoming compensation. As the Financial Times recently explained, “a 150 per cent to 300 per cent return on investment from a successful case is considered typical.”

Around 1 in 4 people affected by a wind- or water-based environmental disaster develops a diagnosable mental disorder. Three months after Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico, the U.S. territory is still struggling to recover. As the island works to restore its infrastructure, disaster and mental health experts show growing concerns over a burgeoning mental health crisis. Click play to learn about how “natural disasters” affect the mind.

As the six-month anniversary of Hurricane María approaches, a deadly mental health crisis has emerged on the island of Puerto Rico. Health officials are reporting endemic levels of trauma related emotional disorders. Many Puerto Ricans are showing symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), experiencing extreme anxiety and depression for the first time in their lives. The severity of the crisis is most sharply expressed in the rise in suicides, which has seen a disturbing 30 percent spike since the storm made landfall.

Thousands of people with preexisting mental health problems have been unable to obtain their needed medications and therapy, causing marked deteriorations in their conditions, especially among the elderly who are particularly vulnerable. Storms and rain produce anxiety and paranoia in children and adults who become worried that there will be more flooding.

Symptoms of PTSD include irritability, mood swings, anxiety, depression, repeated and vivid memories of the event, which lead to physical reactions, confusion or difficulty making decisions, sleep or eating disorders, fear of the event being repeated, an increase in conflict or a more withdrawn and avoidant personality, and physical symptoms such as headaches, nausea, and chest pain. These responses can vary widely depending on the individual, the environment, and the event.

The only suicide hotline in Puerto Rico, Linea PAS, has been dealing with a surge in calls, up nearly 70 percent, from people contemplating suicide.

In an interview with Univision Noticias, the director of Linea PAS, Monserrate Allende Santos, relayed that between the months of October and December 2017 the program received 9,000 suicidal phone calls; 6,733 calls were from callers with suicidal thoughts, while 2,206 were from people who had actually attempted suicide.

A member of the hotline’s call-taking staff told the New York Times, “Sometimes I cannot find the words. Because how can I tell someone to keep calm when they don’t have a place to sleep.”

Linea PAS’ staff, many of whom have experienced their own hardships, patiently try to console, reassure, and talk suicidal hurricane survivors who have lost all hope out of ending their lives. Another staff member is heard in a Times video telling a caller, “the situation of not having light in your house, the situation of being dark, of not having resources, this is temporary.” For some, however, it is not certain that this assertion is true.

In an interview with Newsweek, Kenira Thompson, who heads mental health services at the Ponce Health Sciences University, stated that for the people in rural areas, “It’s as if the storm hit last week.”

“Mental health issues will not stop”m Thompson explained, “if you think about the next hurricane season will start again [soon]. We will have chaos when the first storm is announced on the news. Hopefully, it’s not another storm like María.”

When María made landfall on the island in September, it descended upon a population already in the grip of extreme poverty and depressed living standards. Having been in recession since 2006, half the population stood below the official poverty rate while the official unemployment rate stood at 16 percent. A staggering 60 percent of eligible workers did not participate in the labor force, instead relying on food stamps or working in the “underground economy.”

In the wake of the hurricane this already precarious situation dramatically worsened. Hundreds of people perished or died in the aftermath from lack of basic necessities. Hundreds of thousands of homes and basic infrastructure have been destroyed, leaving, to this day, 150,000 homes and businesses without electricity and much of the island in ruin.

While it’s common for people to experience stress in the immediate aftermath of such an event, the American Psychological Association (APA) stresses that recovery is dependent on one’s ability to resume functioning as they did prior to the disaster and to engage in healthy behaviors, such as a healthy diet, establishing routines, and seeking getting help from a licensed mental health professional.

Healthy behaviors cannot develop when countless homes remain destroyed, when people are trying to live without roofs or are forced to join relatives in overcrowded, unsafe conditions. The establishment of routines is not a possibility in circumstances where people are chronically living without electricity, are struggling to find food and clean water and are unable to travel on closed roads to frequent, or work, in closed businesses and attend closed schools.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency has provided a paltry $3 million for the mental health division of the Puerto Rican Health Department. The failures and crimes of FEMA, and the US government more generally, against the working class of Puerto Rico are innumerable.

In the immediate aftermath of the storm, ports that import about 85 percent of the island’s food supply were shut down under the draconian hundred-year-old Jones Act, which the government only reluctantly lifted weeks later. Another outrageous episode was when Tribute Contracting LLC, awarded a $156 million contract to deliver 30 million meals, only managed to deliver 50,000. The criminality of the US government is best exemplified, however, by the efforts to undermine and ultimately privatize the island’s resources and infrastructure, currently the education system and the public electric power company.

This inadequate provision of social and psychological services by the government has compelled universities to send teams of students, social workers and other volunteers out in a piecemeal effort to meet the needs of the population. These students and workers have made their way to the worst hit areas inland, which have become isolated and hard to reach due to the poor recovery efforts. They go door to door and visit emergency shelters where the newly homeless are crowded in order to conduct physical and psychological screenings and deliver food and water.

Observers and health experts have drawn parallels between the aftermaths of hurricanes Katrina and María: From the physical and social devastation they visited upon New Orleans and Puerto Rico, respectively, to the inadequate governmental response marked by gross negligence and arrogance, the long term physical and psychological trauma their victims are suffering, and the fact that these are both climate-change related catastrophes.

In a report published last year titled, “Mental Health and Our Changing Climate: Impacts, Implications, and Guidance”, psychologists with the APA found that 12 years after Hurricane Katrina, survivors developed mood disorders, saw rates of suicide and suicidal thoughts double, and one in six met the diagnostic criteria for PTSD. Psychiatrists have since stressed the importance of immediate access to mental health care for the victims of natural disasters to help mitigate these types of outbreaks.

At the 10-year mark of Hurricane Katrina, the WSWS published an analysis of the source of the catastrophe that is no less apt at describing the one facing Puerto Rico today: “The sudden shock of Hurricane Katrina exposed the rot at the heart of American capitalism. Decades of social neglect, the staggering growth of social inequality, the putrefaction of American democracy, and the domination of every facet of social life by a narrow and parasitic layer of financial speculators was laid bare before a shocked American and world public. For millions of people around the world, already horrified by American imperialism’s criminal adventure in Iraq, Katrina demonstrated that the American ruling class was no less hostile towards its own working class.

“This rot has spread geometrically in the years since then. Since the onset of the 2008 recession, the attitude of the ruling elite towards Katrina, which saw it as an opportunity to open up further opportunities for profit, has been replicated in every facet of American life. Instead of responding to the recession with a public works program or other measures to alleviate the distress of the working class, American, and, indeed, world capitalism … has responded with a fundamental restructuring of class relations, aimed at nothing less than the dismantling of every gain made by the working class in over a century of bitter struggle.”

The plant’s private operator Tepco says the ice wall has helped reduce the ever-growing amount of radioactive water by half. The plant also pumps out several times as much groundwater before it reaches the tsunami-damaged reactors.

The government-commissioned panel said additional measures need to be taken to minimise the inflow of rainwater and groundwater, such as repairing roofs and other damaged parts of buildings.

“We recognise that the ice wall has had an effect, but more work is needed to mitigate rainfall ahead of the typhoon season”, said panel chairman Yuzo Onishi, a Kansai University civil engineering professor.

The mile-long, coolant-filled underground structure was installed around the wrecked reactor buildings to create a frozen soil barrier to keep groundwater from flowing into the heavily radioactive area.

Tepco said today the amount of contaminated water that collects inside the reactor buildings was reduced to 95 tons per day with the ice wall, compared to nearly 200 tons without.

That is part of the 500 tons of contaminated water created every day at the plant, with the other 300 tons pumped out via wells, treated and stored in tanks.

In addition to the £250m construction cost paid by the government, the ice wall needs about £7m a year to be spent on maintenance and operation.

The plant has been struggling with the ever-growing amounts of water — only slightly contaminated after treatment — now totalling 1 million tons and stored in 1,000 tanks, taking up significant space at the complex, where a decades-long decommissioning effort continues.

Officials aim to minimise the contaminated water in the reactor before starting to remove melted fuel in 2021.